The article highlights the Women in Technology Sharing Online, -- WitsOn -- project that connects young women study science, technology, engineering and math with successful and experienced women working in the STEM field by creating a community of students and mentors.

The online community is structured very much like a massive open online course, or MOOC, and Lewin interviews Yeager about her work with the college’s new MOOC, VizMath.

MOOC Mavens Betty Hurley-Dasgupta and Carol Yeager

‌Yeager and Mentor Betty Hurley-Dasgupta, following on the success of last fall's MOOC on creativity and multicultural communication, will be offering VizMath starting in October.

VizMath will focus on the visualization of math and will be open for all learners. As with last year's MOOC, CMC 11, it will feature synchronous sessions and related activities, such as blogging, that add to the collective knowledge of the topic.

The topics of the eight VizMath are:

math in narrative

hyperbolic curves through crocheting

symmetry in math

visualizing data through graphs

data crunchers

math and art

EscherMath

origami and math.

The topics will be presented through hour-long webinars. Presenters include mathematicians from traditional academic institutions from the U.S,. as well as from Greece and England.

In addition to highlighting Yeager and VizMath, the reporter quotes Stephen Downes, who keynoted CDL’s 2011 annual conference. In Lewin’s story, Downes explains how MOOCs work and the article characterizes the WitsOn project as a “connectivist MOOC.”

“Connectivism” was the subject of Downes’ presentation to CDL. “Connectivism” was the foundation of CMC11 and underlies the structure of VizMath as well.